Home

MGT301

Syllabus

Personal and Business Ethics

Ethical Perspectives

Corporate Values

Introduction

Again your professor reformulates the class presentation, this time on ethics, differently from that of the text book. According to the text's authors ethics in managerial decision making are guided by rules which they list as:

This view, however, is based on the authors perspective that everyone shares a common perspective that the interests of all involved (stakeholders) ought to be considered.

Ethics, however, is about the assumed perspective we bring to decision making. Not everyone in business accepts the authors' assumption about concern for all involved, and not every decision made in business requires this assumption. Ethics is about choice of the referent standard we use in making decisions - from a choice to focus on my interests alone, to consider all of us, or to base a decision in a more universal law.

What we believe, our values, are strong, but largely unexplored, determinants of our choices and our behavior. Recall: Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic made the argument that it took a transformation of beliefs with respect to authority and work to establish the culture in which the Industrial Revolution could bring about the modern capitalist state.

Students often "snicker" when the subject of values and ethics are mentioned in the context of a business course. Business seemingly has a value frame of "self interested" motive that is typically characterized as "greed". To even approach the subject of business ethics sounds "silly", "preachy", even "whimpy". Since I am not a minister or priest (I am a business professor), my approach is not "religious" - although I have known "ethical" business practitioners from nearly every major religion. Instead, this material is based on a growing body of literature in "Business Ethics" that heavily borrows from the traditional studies of philosophy and ethics. I take this time  in all my courses to explore "business ethics" -- not because of some ethical agenda, although I do want my students to be "ethical" -- but, rather to help the student understand the underlying source of values that the student draws on to make decisions. This module also facilitates my incorporation of the University's "Code of Conduct" into the first month of my courses - something I am contractually required to do.